As I indicated in a recent post, our oldest gay friends Zach and Gary, founder members with ourselves of the ‘safer sex’ Tuan Jiebrotherhood, are joining us here in Portugal for a while. Zach to work as a masseur and both of them to work with us in shows utilising Zach’s acrobatic and tumbling talents alongside Gary’s participation with additional endurance feats based around his many years of ferocious martial arts training.

Like this guy here, they are both devoted gym bunnies!

Zach is a few years older than us, and lost gay friends to Aids in SoCal. He became concerned for Dave and I when he met us, to the extent that he proposed the ‘closed group’ thing which we have adhered to ever since. Once Dave and I figured out what we both felt we wanted to do, he was our first conquest and vice versa!

Zach is a half Mexican, half Italian American and did not know who his father was until the stranger events given in my next two books started to happen. The Power of Loveand Against All Odds. Upon that discovery, and although he had adopted a different name from the one his mother gave him because he hated it, he went ‘underground’ again for a bit and things became complicated. Fortunately, all is well now. The symbols for Tuan Jie appear on the covers of those books in celebration of a wonderful caring relationship: the group extended to its current ten persons, and we’re really looking forward to getting back together with at least these two!

Zach has worked on and off as a masseur for a local salon in Oak Ridge which has just been sold after many years of ownership by the wonderful ‘Maisie’, who has allowed him to slope off with us from time to time to do circus tours and other stuff. He decided it was time for a change and was delighted when I let slip that our resident Russian lady masseur was throwing in her towel…

Gary, Zach’s partner since just after the foundation of Tuan Jie, has been a reluctant banker in a suit for the past 18 months and is taking a vacation ‘…from which I might not return to work!…” We all wait with interest to see what he decides: as an only (and obviously gay) child he has had difficult relations with his parents, who basically threw him out of his home. Zach was his lifeline, and the rest is history. He has trained his kung fu to the highest level, and will be balancing on his stomach on one spear point during the act as well as getting his chest and stomach run over if we can figure out how to get a suitable vehicle into the arena. But, if he stays longer term, he is going to have to find a suitable training centre and, frankly, something else to do to earn more money than the shows alone will provide. We’ll have to see.

And after that little history lesson, a nod to our own training regime for fitness and acrobatics. The usual picture gallery follows. Some sturdy lads showing off or doing their thing!

…and some more bar boys doing their “other” thing!

Other bar boys are more conventional in their group pix!

A man taking a breather! We’ll do the same, with a final ‘teaser’ from my new book which is published next Thursday:

OK, this was it. He gauged the distance to the first bridge pillar, which he could barely make out although it was just a couple of feet in front of him. He would have to work by feel, going really slowly around all four sides of the structure so that, if he encountered anything unexpected, he wouldn’t trigger it. He found that he could just stand on the bottom with his nose above the surface, holding on with one had against the slow current whilst feeling carefully above and below the waterline with the other. It took him about five minutes to complete the circuit and satisfy himself that there was nothing sinister to be discovered.

He glided silently, under the water, across to the other pillar. Here, the water was slightly deeper but, holding on with one hand, he followed the same methodical inspection. Ducking repeatedly below the surface, he was able to check the second bridge support right down to the river bed, as he had done on the first one. Nothing.

Now all he had to do was swim back and report. He stepped forward , taking a lungful of air before ducking back under. Then his right foot banged into something. Not attached to the pillar, but nearly submerged on the river bed, right next to it. Oh, now what could that be? He ducked under and felt carefully with his hands. It seemed like some sort of metal box: he could feel a lid and a clasp on it. Something thrown off the bridge, or dropped accidently? No, it was right under the bridge. Shit. This changed things: unless he could satisfy himself that the box was innocuous, or otherwise, his mission would have failed. There didn’t seem to be any wires leading upwards to the bridge, though: if it were a device triggered when traffic passed over the bridge, surely there should be… His mind raced.

His other foot then stepped upon something rather sharp, some sort of lever. Just audible above the gurgling sound of the water, there was a faint ‘click’…

To work out how that fits in with the extracts I offered you previously about the outcast Native American gay boy on a quest… buy the book!

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About tonycavanagh

Born Northampton UK; school Oxford UK and Oak Ridge Tennessee, where I met my wonderful partner Dave, also from UK. Oak Ridge is our main training base for acrobatics and circus stuff, but we also established a base in Wales (UK) to serve us when we are working in Europe. Our 'story', of finding gay love, learning the acrobatics trade and then of how we got shot at during our show (and worse was to follow - just to prove that the risks of being an acrobat are not always the most obvious ones!) are now available in my three books 'Loving the Boy', 'The Power of Love' and 'Against All Odds'. Links available on most blog posts. Actually, waiting for the imminent arrival of the first printed copies was far scarier than anything we do in performance. A fourth book - not about us but exploring the sadness of a gay Native American boy denied his true identity - is currently with an agent for evaluation. watch for 'Let The Future Find Me' in due time. And now to book five... another boy, another quest... seems its always boys...